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January 1, 1958 Grandmaster Flash is born Joseph Saddler in Barbados. The name "Flash" came about because he had a friend named Gordon, so one of their buddies called him Flash so they would be "Flash Gordon," like the sci-fi superhero.
October 3, 1957 ABC premieres The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom variety show, later featured in Michael Moore's documentary Roger and Me. The show features unobjectionable acts like The Four Lads, Ella Fitzgerald and Johnny Mathis; TV Guide says it's "about as exciting as a milkshake with two straws." It runs for three years and helps launch the career of Woody Allen, who is one of the writers.
August 19, 1957 In a "Special Music Report," Newsweek puts Pat Boone on the cover with the tagline, "His Refreshing Song Fills The Air."More
February 5, 1957 Bill Haley arrives in London for his first British tour. He's the first American rock star to tour there and is met by about 4,000 fans at Heathrow Airport, mostly thanks to promoters who hyped his coming as "the second battle of Waterloo."
January 6, 1957 Elvis Presley makes his third and final appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, where he performs seven songs in three segments, including "Hound Dog," "Don't Be Cruel" and "Heartbreak Hotel." He is only seen from the waist up, leaving viewers to speculate as to what the screams in the audience are about.
August 15, 1956 "Colonel" Tom Parker, actually a Dutch immigrant who merely played at being a Southern aristocrat, becomes "special adviser" to Elvis Presley, effectively taking over management duties from Bob Neal, who knew managing the King was about to become a full-time job.
January 10, 1956 Folk singer Shawn Colvin is born in South Dakota. Her song "Sunny Came Home" (about a woman who burns her house down) wins the Grammy Awards for Record of the Year and Song of the Year in 1998.
September 30, 1955 James Dean is killed in a car accident at age 24. Dean dies around the same time rock and roll comes alive (the #1 song the day he dies: Pat Boone's cover of "Ain't That A Shame" - clearly America is at a crossroads).More
July 9, 1955 Bill Haley & His Comets' "Rock Around The Clock" becomes the first Rock song to hit #1 on the Billboard Pop chart, where it stays for eight weeks. The song was originally released as a the B-side of "Thirteen Women," but became a massive hit after it appeared in the film Blackboard Jungle.More
November 19, 1954 While driving from Vegas to Los Angeles, Sammy Davis, Jr. crashes into another car on Route 66 in San Bernardino, California, and three days later, permanently loses use of his left eye. While in the hospital, friend Eddie Cantor tells Davis about the twin struggles of the Jewish and African-Americans, leading Davis to convert to Judaism. (The accident, paradoxically, increased his popularity.)
March 10, 1954 The Threepenny Opera opens at the Theater de Lys in New York's Greenwich Village. A revival of a German production from 1928, the standout scene is when the Street Singer does "Mack The Knife," a song about the murderous Macheath.More
December 10, 1953 The first issue of Playboy magazine is published (Marilyn Monroe is on the cover). Over the next two decades, "playboy" shows up in several hit songs:
"Playboy" by Marvelettes (1962)
"He's Just A Playboy" by The Drifters (1964)
"Playboy" by Gene & Debbe (1968)
"International Playboy" by Wilson Pickett (1973)More
February 26, 1953 Michael Bolton is born Michael Bolotin in New Haven, Connecticut. Before reaching soft-rock stardom, he fronts a hard-rock band called Blackjack.More
October 7, 1951 John Mellencamp is born in Seymour, Indiana. He has Spina bifida, but survives thanks to an experimental surgery performed at Riley Children's Hospital in Indianapolis.More
December 8, 1950 Dan Hartman is born in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. The "I Can Dream About You" singer also pens hits for other artists, including "Free Ride" for Edgar Winter Group and "Living In America" for James Brown.
May 13, 1950 Stevie Wonder is born Stevland Morris in Saginaw, Michigan.More
May 9, 1949 Billy Joel is born in The Bronx, New York, raised in Hicksville on Long Island.More
July 8, 1947 New Mexico's Roswell Daily Record reports an alien aircraft has crashed near a local ranch with the headline "RAAF Captures Flying Saucer In Roswell Region." In the coming decades, extraterrestrials and flying saucers invade several songs, including David Bowie's "Starman," Megadeth's "Hangar 18," and Radiohead's "Subterranean Homesick Alien."More
May 10, 1946 Guitarist Dave Mason, a founding member of Traffic, is born in Worcester, England. He writes their song "Feelin' Alright," which isn't really about feelin' alright - Mason tells Songfacts it's about "another relationship gone bad."
March 16, 1945 The #1 song in America is "Rum and Coca-Cola" by The Andrews Sisters. It's a sanitized cover of a calypso song about American servicemen in Trinidad who get drunk and solicit prostitutes.
September 12, 1944 R&B singer Barry White is born Barry Eugene Carter in Galveston, Texas. He is raised in South Central Los Angeles.More
December 18, 1943 Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards is born in Dartford, Kent, England.More
May 8, 1943 Danny Whitten, guitarist in Neil Young's band Crazy Horse, is born in Columbus, Georgia. The song "The Needle And The Damage Done" is about Whitten, who dies of a drug overdose at 29.
June 24, 1942 Arthur Brown is born Arthur Wilton in Yorkshire, England. Making a name for himself in the world of performance art, he has a huge hit with "Fire."More
February 20, 1941 Singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie is born. According to her birth certificate, she's born Beverly Jean Santamaria in Stoneham, Massachusetts, but she claims to be Native-Canadian, born Beverly Sainte-Marie in Qu'Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan and adopted by a couple in Stoneham.More
November 4, 1940 Blues rocker Delbert McClinton, known for the 1992 country duet (with Tanya Tucker) "Tell Me About It," is born in Lubbock, Texas.
April 2, 1939 Marvin Gaye is born Marvin Pentz Gay Jr. in Washington, DC.More
August 13, 1938 Robert Johnson, famous for his song "Crossroads," where he sings about making a deal with the Devil to attain his musical prowess, is poisoned during a gig in Greenwood, Mississippi. Most accounts claim the guy who owned the club put the poison in Johnson's whiskey bottle because Johnson was having an affair with his wife. He dies three days later at age 27.
April 15, 1937 Country singer-songwriter Bob Luman ("Let's Think About Living") is born in Blackjack, Texas.
September 7, 1936 Buddy Holly is born. He lives just 22 years but influences many of the biggest stars of the '60s, including The Beatles. Don McLean's "American Pie" is about his death.
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